Boat Test: Pershing 82
Meet the latest from Pershing Yachts: the 82. She moves the water at better than 46 knots by her ZF SeaRex surface drives, and wraps you and your guests in sleek design. Learn all about her here.

Like A RocketPershing lives up to its name with a yacht that flies across the water with guided-missile speed.Pershings seem to defy the laws of physics. It is normal for one to assume that as things get bigger they also get slower, but no one seems to have told them that. Look back on the Pershings we have tested over the years, ranging from 62 to 115 feet, and

The fuel berth in Palma, Mallorca, seemed unusually popular considering the recent rocketing price of oil. Sailboats drifted about, patiently awaiting their turn. Three or four motoryachts circled warily, their captains tweaking the throttles and burning out their bow thrusters in an effort to keep station in the afternoon breeze—alert to the imagined danger of some impertinent fishing boat

The first Pershing I ever drove was the 88. She was big and fast and looked like she'd been designed by George Lucas' props department. But the thing most people remember about her was that she was silver. The only silver rockets any of us had seen before were at Kennedy Space Center.What I remember most

The flashy paint job is head-turning, but so are the vertical hull windows for the master.More than a decade ago at one of my first boat shows in South Florida, I ran into a photographer who was fond of boasting about his latest trips. He’d say things like, “Oh, I just took a little trip over to such-and-such,” name-dropping some

On Saturday afternoon at last February's Miami International Boat Show, amid the dozens of launches and parties I was obligated to attend, I was having lunch at an oceanside bistro when a commotion erupted nearby. Two couples were standing, bickering, and pointing towards the ocean. It seemed they couldn't agree on what kind of boat was racing across the horizon. My curiosity was piqued, but

Some years ago I wrote a piece for a British magazine about a Royal Navy frigate. A state-of-the-art anti-submarine warship, she displaced around 4,800 tons and carried me from the naval base at Portland down the coast to Plymouth, England, at 30 knots, thanks to two Rolls-Royce Olympus gas turbines. Mischievously, as we anchored in the sound in the gathering dusk, I asked the engineering officer

They named the company after the missile, not the general, and you can see why. In more than 20 years there hasn’t been a Pershing motoryacht that wasn’t fast, sleek, and powerful, and the 62 upholds this tradition. Sometimes, the marine equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon is the best tool for the job.It was on a late-September morning at around 1500 rpm that this analogy somehow

Be careful what you wish for. This timeless adage struck me as I recalled the remark I had made a few days earlier, when Shannon McCoy, marketing director for MarineMax, asked me what the plan was for testing the new Pershing 50. Ignoring the apparent contradiction in my reply, I said, “Let’s try to find some decent-size waves so we can see how she handles a seaway and some flat-calm water to do

I’d just finished testing the Pershing 76 and was walking down the dock at Miami’s Bayside Marina when I was approached by a couple who’d just stepped off a rather boxy-looking 50-some-foot motoryacht. Noticing the Power & Motoryacht logo on my shirt, they introduced themselves as long-time subscribers. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather, the marina, and their boat, and then the